Computer operating systems commonly incorporate a feature to communicate system and application prompt and status information to the user. A notification area is available on the user interface that provides a mechanism for such communications. Notification areas are typically a user interface representation of the status of system, application or program items. This representation provides user awareness of the communicated status and usually provides a method for users to access a higher level of detail on particular items. Typically, applications that are developed for an operating system have the ability to place items in the notification area and to interact with items so placed. The presence and changes in appearance, along with the positioning of these items, provide notification to the user. Thus, users can quickly become aware of and recognize newly delivered notifications.
The notification area is populated as applications or the system request a user notification from the operating system. FIG. 6 illustrates a view of a notification area on a display produced in the “WINDOWS” operating system. As shown in FIG. 6, notification items are represented by icons 240-266, each associated with a particular notification. The notification area is typically located along the bottom of a computer display. A notification area typically displays an icon or some other representation that corresponds to the name of an application and/or a status. For instance, icon 266 located in the far left of the notification area represents a notification to the user that the virus protection program is currently running on the system and icon 260 indicates that a PCMCIA device is available on the system. As more notifications arise, the number of icons or symbols in the notification area increases. Since this area can be populated at will by applications, inactive items can be and are regularly placed in the notification area. This placement serves as a launch point into the application and as free advertising for the application. Therefore, while placement of the item in the notification area may be desirable for the application author, it may be undesirable for the user because it obscures the purpose of the notification area. Consequently, the numerous icons added and intended for divergent purposes obscure the original intention of the notification area, namely the delivery of meaningful user notifications, and prevent users from recognizing newly delivered notifications.
In the “WINDOWS” graphical operating system, as applications make system requests via the provided Shell_NotifyIcon Application Programming Interface (“API”), items can be added to the notification area. More items are added to the notification area as more applications make the request. These new items are placed to the right of the right-most item and make it difficult for a user who wishes to determine how or if the notification area has recently changed.
As previously mentioned, when multiple applications place icons in the notification area for non-intended purposes the user becomes unduly burdened with trying to determine which icons represent valid notifications. For example, an application could place an icon in the notification area merely as a way to display its icon in multiple locations on the user interface. Therefore, it can be seen that the notification area becomes cluttered with items that do not serve a notification function. This defeats the primary function of the notification area, namely to quickly and meaningfully notify the user.
Accordingly, there exists a need to better organize the notification area and to obscure undesirable items from the notification area. Moreover, there is a need for such a method and system to create more efficient, faster and consistent communication to the user via the user interface.